THING

 

THING

Real Name: Benjamin Jacob Grimm

First Appearance: Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #1, November 1961

Powers: Ben Grimm was accidentally bombarded with mutagenic, specific-frequency cosmic rays that caused his bone structure, musculature, internal organ composition, soft-tissue structure, and skin to increase in density and toughness.

Originally, his orange body was lumpy, like oatmeal, and he possessed only about Superhuman Class 5 strength. As time passed, though, he solidified into uneven rock, eventually reaching a strength level of Superhuman Class 85. Besides his strength he possesses superhuman endurance, reaction time and resistance to direct physical assault and temperature extremes from -75° to 800° Fahrenheit before exposure or heat prostration occurs. He originally had the power to transform back and forth into the Thing at will, and in the first few months of his career, he frequently did so by subconsciously triggering the change. After meeting Alicia Masters, and finding her so enamored with the Thing and not Ben Grimm (as he briefly became in her presence), Ben set up a series of psychic blocks which prevented him from transforming or being transformed back into his human form permanently. On a conscious level, Thing was completely unaware of having done this and continued asking Reed Richards to find ways to change him back to normal, but even the successful attempts never lasted very long. During one period, he reverted to his human form after prolonged exposure to the Hulk's gamma radiation, and Reed outfitted him with an exoskeleton to boost his strength, which was externally identical to his Thing form. After being blasted with cosmic rays by Galactus, however, Ben transformed back into the real Thing, stronger than ever before.

Another boost in strength came after a Skrull aging ray brought him to the point of death, only to be reversed and his body revitalized by the process. At one point, Reed had created what he thought was the ultimate way to turn Ben back to normal -- a process which not only would revert him back to human, but place a "cosmic lock" on his metabolism which would prevent any further change in his body from occurring after the procedure ended.

Unfortunately, Ben's psychic blocks remained in place, and he was only reverted back to the lumpy oatmeal look, seemingly indefinitely. Only after Franklin Richards accidentally used his vast powers to age himself to adulthood was Thing reverted to his "unlocked" rocky form and Reed made aware of Ben's psychic blocks. As time passed, Ben and Alicia began to grow apart from one another, and the blocks began to weaken. Once they were separated by vast physical distance as well as emotional distance, during the Secret Wars, Ben began to revert back to his human self, first by chance, and later through an act of will. Erroneously believing Battleworld's unique environment to be responsible for his transformation ability, the Thing stayed behind after the Secret Wars to contemplate his life. Unfortunately, a series of events on Battleworld led to Ben's human side gaining sentience as an independent being and becoming corrupt, and when this manifestation was ultimately slain, it removed Thing's transformation power.

Returning to Earth, Ben was later caught in another cosmic ray bombardment while on a space mission, transforming into a larger, more powerful version of himself with pointed stalactite rocks in place of his smoother ones, and a strength level which exceeded Class 100 significantly. When Reed designed a special device to drain off additional magically-enhanced cosmic energy from Johnny Storm, Ben was accidentally knocked into the device, reverting back to his human state for the time being. During missions with the Fantastic Four at the time, using a special attache case that opened into tesseract space to store more matter than physically possible. He kept a rocket-blasting pistol and his old Thing exoskeleton in there. Due to personal problems developing between him and his girlfriend Sharon Ventura, the She-Thing at the time, Ben willingly subjected himself to cosmic rays to become the Thing again. Shortly before Onslaught, he discovered a metamorphic ray machine that allowed him to transform back and forth whenever exposed to its beams, but the device was cannibalized for parts in battle with Onslaught.

Sometime after his return from the Heroes Reborn universe, Ben was exposed to the alchemical potions of Diablo and the transmuting stone touch of the Grey Gargoyle in short order. These two unique occurrences gave him the power to transform at will by making his Thing form akin to an organic exoskeleton which he could summon on and off his body on command from extra-dimensional space. This eventually proved problematic, though, when Ben began spawning psychotic variations of the Thing from his exo-skin. The only method to eradicate the different versions of the Thing involved permanently making Ben into the Thing again.

Ben was provided a special serum concocted by the Future Foundation to "manage" his condition. As a result of the serum, Ben spontaneously reverts to human form once a year, for one week, before automatically changing back to the Thing. A side effect of the serum is that Ben only ages in his human form -- as the Thing, his aging process is completely frozen. Effectively, he ages only one year for every 52 years he lives, and alternate futures have shown him surviving more than a millennium into the future.

Ben Grimm has training from the U.S. Air Force and is a highly skilled test pilot and astronaut.